


Metal

by charmquark



Category: Naruto.
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-17 10:56:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmquark/pseuds/charmquark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem was, neither of them were steel. ( ItaSaku )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metal

**Author's Note:**

> (Written 11/2011)
> 
> Self-indulgent dystopian babyfic. Whatever, don't judge me. Kindasorta inspired by a conversation on plurk.

_The first thing he did was take out the sentries._

_There were three of them, and none of them heard or saw what attacked them before Itachi opened their throats like roads stretched before him, so none of them could shout._

_From there it was a matter of pressing the advantage of surprise and slay the clansmen who might, if they combined forces —_ might —  _have posed a challenge, or at least kept him occupied long enough for some of the others to escape, and Itachi had his orders._

_Kill them all. Yank the Uchiha clan from the living earth by the root. Cut them down with their own tempered weapon._

It wasn’t much of a surprise to him that their newborn was quiet. Sasuke had been the fussier baby of the two brothers, and even he only infrequently woke their parents in the middle of the night. In a way, it was a welcome relief from the stress of her birth. It was the first time in two years that Sakura had dared use medical ninjutsu, because they were alone, had no hospital to go to in case something went wrong. Subsequently it was the first time Itachi had activated his sharingan in a long time too, because even though her control was exceptional her chakra would shine like a beacon to a sensor-type, and they needed the extra level of vigilance in such a vulnerable moment.

Nine hours of labor before a wail cut the air, and the new mother collapsed like a crumbling tower as the tension and the strain of maintaining her chakra flow through the agony of childbirth left her all at once, left her too exhausted to help clean up. He did that instead without complaint, considering she’d done all the hard work, and watched her curl protectively around the infant once he was done, already entrenched in love.

Sakura hated him, once. She hadn’t bothered to hide that fact from him either. Propinquity may have stripped away the harsh layers, but he still wasn’t convinced that she’d ever totally forgiven him for his crimes. Not the genocide detailed in the old bingo books — more people than he would have liked knew the ugly truth about that, her among them — but his crimes against Sasuke.

Fair enough. Itachi saw, where others probably wouldn’t, the fine thread of consequence as it looped around his brother, to her, to her team, her family through blood but not genetics. He saw the ripples spread beyond setting his brother down a dark path; in hurting Sasuke, he’d indirectly hurt her too.

He accepted that. He never once apologized for it. He likely never would.

The softness in her eyes as she smiled at the baby was something she’d yet to turn on him. Not to such a degree, anyway. But Itachi had never expected that. He’d never expected to have a daughter with a woman whose heart had once (still?) belonged to his younger brother. Hadn’t ever expected that he’d have children at all: didn’t plan on living long enough to. If he were the type to speculate, he might wonder whether this was all some kind of fabrication, some surreal genjutsu; but he was a well-renowned genius with those, and knew the difference between reality and illusion.

She let him sit next to her so she could lean weakly against his side as the baby nursed for the first time, and that alone was far more than he’d ever calculated for.

_The night was silent save for the slide of his blade through flesh and bone, time and thought smoothed out by the brutal training that had shaped him. The blur made him capable. Some of them fought, breaking the quiet apart; none of them for long. He worked fast, never staying in any one room longer than necessary, but that was all it took. The curse of the sharingan was that he only needed half a breath’s glance to burn the images into his memory like the sun scalded spots into someone’s retinas —_

Not being in the habit of deluding himself, he knew this small, fragile new life was an accident, not a gift of fate or some equally romantic sentiment. Given the choice, Itachi wouldn’t have her here at all. Given the choice, he might have gone back and stopped himself from seeking warmth when Sakura reached for him to find surcease from loneliness because he was the only one there, because they were alone, because they had by some strange happenstance found each other during the tumultuous months after the last Great Shinobi War gutted the hidden villages. Ate the lives of so many ninja. Cracked the whole shinobi system apart like an egg, forcing the few survivors to scatter. Madara was dead, but so were the kages, and so was Uzumaki Naruto, and the gods only knew where Sasuke might be. When they stumbled across each other’s path, she was grieving, and he was without purpose.

Missing-nin was a meaningless title now, because all of them were missing. Hiding. No one with any sense turned down a potential ally in that chaos, and Sakura was, most of the time, a sensible girl. And she’d done her part to keep his brother alive.

He might have stopped himself; then again, he might not have. Itachi was either a profoundly selfless person, or a profoundly selfish one, depending on the way one examined the course of his life. Reality was characterized by the bounds assigned to it by each individual, after all. Itachi had very little opinion either way, except when it came to his choice not to push Sakura away when she kissed him.

He should have, but he didn’t. A shinobi is a tool, but the flaw in his design is that he isn’t forged of cold and impartial steel, which can’t tell the difference between the heat of blood and the heat of a girl’s hands, and lips, and skin, and couldn’t even begin to appreciate her warmth from the inside.

_— his uncle’s pinked teeth as he coughed up and choked on and drowned in the fluid filling his lungs; the pattern arterial spray made on the wall when he split the carotid of a distant cousin, a boy about a year older than Sasuke; the terrified, out-of-place green eyes of a woman he vaguely recognized who woke with only enough time to clutch her week-old child closer, as if that would have prevented him from sliding his katana through both of them at once._

Sakura was young and beautiful and responsive and _alive_ , and Itachi was not metal. They both of them were looking for something; neither found it the first time, so eventually they tried again.

Once more.

And so on.

If he’d never known what she looked like with her head tossed back, what her bare skin tasted like after she’d been running in the rain, the strength of her thighs around his hips, he wouldn’t have missed it. Now, though...

He couldn’t excise the knowledge, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. This, he knew was selfish. Comfort was not a luxury he normally allotted himself, but he was human and searching for a measure of peace when all he’d ever known was war, and she was human and compassionate and forgiving and looking for someone to fill in the gaps where she’d lost, which seemed like a fair trade to him. Instead he wished, absently, that either or both of them hadn’t been fertile. The trouble was, neither of them were steel and taking life wasn’t the only thing shinobi’s bodies were designed to do.

_When his violent path had gutted out all the houses in the district save one, the blood of all his family slid off the blade of Itachi’s sword and marked his steps,_

_drip_

_drip_

_drip drip_

_drip_

_as he walked home._

But there was no sense in lingering over “what if’s” when there was already a little girl whose blood was half Sakura’s and half his, and he could have left them but didn’t. Wouldn’t. Because he’d held her and she’d grasped for him with tiny, uncoordinated fingers, and he was human sometimes.

Sakura probably would have tracked him down and tried to break his bones, anyway. She could be ferocious and determined when she wanted to be.

So Itachi found the vocabulary he needed to describe his living family’s bonds expand beyond merely “brother” (assuming Sasuke was still alive, somewhere) to include “daughter,” “uncle,” “lover,” “mother,” “father.”

_Almost all his family._

“Itachi.”

_... no. He remembered his mother’s voice as being more brittle than that, choked with shock as her eldest son stalked toward her with sword in hand and gore flecking his uniform, and he never needed the sharingan to arrest her, or maybe it had been Sakura all along, bleeding and holding a small corpse to her breast —_

“Itachi, wake _up_.”

And he did, abruptly, because he was too well trained to wake up in parts. It was a wonder he hadn’t snapped awake the first time she’d said his name. Her hand was on his shoulder, his circled her wrist tight enough to bruise, and he knew the nightmare must have shredded his guard apart because Sakura’s expression went from curious and tired and a little annoyed to deeply concerned, all at once. “What happened?”

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t speak. The truth was, he _couldn’t_. Ghosts had stolen his voice, made off with composure, and he released her hand only to curl his arm around her back and pull her close. The move startled her, if the way she stiffened was anything to go by, but he could wait for her to soften up.

He counted off a handful of heartbeats before her small, strong fingers gently worked their way into his hair and combed through it. Itachi pressed his brow to her shoulder as Sakura completed the interlocking circles of their arms. She didn’t say anything more, and the room was quiet save for the three of them breathing.


End file.
